


This Room is Too Quiet

by harborshore



Series: This Time It Wasn't the End [2]
Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-25
Updated: 2012-11-25
Packaged: 2017-11-19 12:01:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/573052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/harborshore/pseuds/harborshore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky needs some help. Steve does his best. Post-movie. </p><p>Set during my Marvel Big Bang, but as long as you accept the premise of Bucky being in SHIELD Medical after SHIELD found him, it can mostly stand on its own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Room is Too Quiet

**Author's Note:**

  * For [goshemily](https://archiveofourown.org/users/goshemily/gifts).



> Happy belated birthday to my dearest Emily! The title is from “Breath of Life” by Florence and the Machine.

“Hey,” Steve says, coming through the door to Bucky’s room in SHIELD Medical. 

Natasha and Bucky look up at him, and there’s something so identical in their eyes for a moment that it throws him a little. He swallows. “My turn to take a shift?”

“Yeah,” Bucky says, rubbing at his jaw. “And Tasha needs to sleep, too.”

“I’m fine,” Natasha says, but she gets up when Bucky pokes her. She smiles down at him in a way Steve hasn’t ever seen her smile at anyone, not even Phil or Clint. But it doesn’t surprise him that their shared history would do that.

“Get some sleep,” Steve says, nudging her when she passes him.

“I will when you will,” she says, and Christ, but she’s good at that.

“You’re not wrong,” he says softly, and she half-turns towards him, mouth quirking.

“I don't tend to be,” she says, gives him a half-wave and leaves.

“She never sleeps,” Bucky tells him when he walks closer to the bed. “It was a thing, you know. She’d tell me to sleep and she’d keep watch. I had to drug her once, because it’d been something like five days.” He looks at Steve, tilting his head. “Should I be doing that for you, too? I could hoard some of the shit they give me here, you know.”

“Doesn’t help,” Steve says, shrugging. “The serum, it, you know. Can’t get drunk, can’t--”

“--take drugs,” Bucky finishes. “I remember. Well, that sucks. What do you do?”

“Beat up exercise equipment,” Steve says dryly. “I think I’m gonna get a bill soon.”

“That’d be fair, wouldn’t it?” Bucky says. “You bust it, you buy it.” He scratches at his jaw again. He’s got stubble going on, Steve realizes. Bucky used to shave every day, said he didn’t like the itching. Maybe he changed his habits in the last (impossible) sixty years, but he doesn’t look very comfortable.

“You need a shave, buddy?” he says. “Do you want me to get you a razor? There should, I think they put this stuff in the bathrooms in this place, Clint was talking about how stocked they were--” He starts to rise, but sits back down when Bucky shakes his head.

“Uh,” Bucky says. “Wouldn’t help. Can’t really shave with this hand.” Two of his fingers were broken when he was found and they haven’t quite healed yet.

“I’m sure one of the nurses would do it for you,” Steve says carefully.

Bucky grins, but it’s not one of mirth. “No offense, but there’s only two people in this place that I trust with a blade at my throat.” His hand is picking at the covers.

“You mean Natasha and--me?” Steve says.

“Yeah, Steve,” Bucky says, in that way he has when he thinks Steve is being an idiot. At least some things don’t change. “I mean you and Tasha.”

Steve swallows. “Well, why don’t I do it then?”

Bucky considers him. “Yeah, okay,” he says. “You’re going to have to help me to the bathroom, but yeah, okay.”

Steve half-carries him, in fact, despite Bucky’s initial protests. 

“You’d do it for me,” he says, and Bucky falls silent at that, then laughs quietly, reaching up to rub Steve’s head. 

“Yeah, buddy,” he says. “I guess I would, at that.”

Steve helps him sit down on the toilet seat and gets a wet washcloth, giving it to Bucky.

“Here,” he says. “Get your face--”

“I do remember the procedure,” Bucky says, dabbing at his face.

“Sorry,” Steve says, getting the shaving foam. He tries to be careful, to keep his hands soft on Bucky’s face. It’s strange, to touch like this. Bucky closes his eyes at one point, and his breathing sounds a little shaky.

“You still have fucking warm hands,” he says. “It’s weird.”

Steve wants to apologize, but Bucky flinches a little every time he does, so he doesn’t. “The serum,” he says instead, as an explanation for his circulation (though it had taken days for him to warm back up, after the ice).

“I know,” Bucky says, opening his eyes again, looking amused. Of course he does. Steve told him about all the ways the serum changed him, once, after a mission had nearly gone south on them and they were drinking hard to forget it. Well, the rest were getting drunk and Steve was drinking along out of solidarity. And then Bucky asked and Steve answered, because they needed the distraction. Steve should have known he’d remember.

“Yeah,” he says, and gets the razor.


End file.
